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Episode 26 Frog Gigging

By Jason , on May 5th, 2011

Well here’s a subject I bet few people have covered in a podcast. Today I talk about the nearly lost Southern art of frog-gigging.

I’d have a hard time trying to describe just how fun it is to go frog gigging. If being muddy, in waist high water with snakes in the dark with a sharp pointy stick sounds fun then this is the podcast you want to listen to. I was fortunate to have so many places to gig that many of my summer nights revolved around gigging season.

In this episode I discuss:

*Equipment

*Why I don’t use a boat and think people who do should have a good reason to do so.

*The technique including gigging with friends.

*Cleaning and dressing frog legs.

*What frog legs taste like and how to cook them.

Anyone who wants more detail or a written copy of this should check out Backwoods Home Magazine later this Summer when my article on the subject is set to appear.

3 comments to Episode 26 Frog Gigging

That was a great podcast, thanks for sharing the information. We are new to living in the country (just moved out here 3 years ago) and we have two ponds with lots of frogs. The children like to catch and release them, so I am not sure what they would think about trying them for dinner; but it is a good local food source, so I would like to try them at least once. Thanks again!

I am from northern California, which is about as alike to Los Angeles as Miami is to Billings, Montana. We are huntin, fishin, country folk up here. We hunt ducks, geese, quail, turkeys, deer, elk, cottontail, etc., catch crawdads and frog gig. At least some of us do. Frog gigging is a dying art!

My nephew lives up on the Oregon border in alfalfa country and it is full of ditches and loaded with frogs. Our one night record is 108 huge frogs and the most pissed off wives ever. Sorry! We drank a little whisky to keep warm for 12 hours straight and cooked a snack of about 30 frog legs for breakfast.

I have a couple of tips for the gigger. One is to drive into the area of the ditches and turn the pickup off and sit and listen. Especially in the early summer when they are courting some foxy babe frog. You can here them a mile away and they guide you to them with their love song. The second huge tip is to use a “HTFB” (High Tech Frog Bucket). This is one of those fish baskets with the spring loaded tops. There is nothing better to hold the frogs. Also, sharpen your gig every time so when you jab them when they are floating and not against something, so the gig penetrates easily.

I love frog gigging. Matter of fact, I think I generally have an issue with wanting to stab things. My favorite stabbing hobby is spear fishing. I am 58 years old and I have had that hobby for 40 years. It is the best of two worlds – hunting and fishing. I dive mostly on the north coast of California and it ain’t for sissys! The water is rough and sometimes you can barely see your hand in front of your face. You can’t spear fish when its that murky but you can still dive for abalone. It is weird diving 20 or 30 feet when you can only see gray until the bottom jumps into focus. You aren’t allowed to use scuba tanks for abalone and must hold your breath. We usually take a spear gun and spear fish at the same time if we have 10 or more feet of visibility. It is a fun sport once you get some experience under your belt and get comfortable with your equipment. I wrote an article on it that is for the beginners and folks that want to see what it is like. It is about 3,500 words so I ain’t going to re-write it here but if you want to read it, it is in the blogs at http://www.fishnfools.com. Did I mention the great white shark issue? They are there and they are 20 feet and can turn you into a turd pretty readily! The water is so murky, you wouldn’t even see them coming. Their main food source once they are grown is seals and a person in a black wet suit, similar in shape and size, is often mistaken for one. I shouldn’t say often because it is highly more likely that you will get killed in a car wreck on the way to the ocean to dive or get struck by lightening than to get bit by a shark and even then, most people survive. I have a defense for them. If I see one, I turn the water brown all around me!

Anyway, I don’t know why I was thinking frogging at this time of year. Up there where we usually frog will be about 10 degrees this weekend. I might go duck hunting, but that is a pain in the arse when you have to wade in shin deep mud, in waist deep water and break 1 inch ice to go get your ducks! I am getting too old for that crap! Turkey and pheasant season opened so maybe I will road hunt those instead.